Guardian interview with Juno Dawson

[RoyalCorgi]

The Guardian is once more peddling male fantasies of what a teenage girl is:

www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/11/juno-dawson-trans-alice-wonderland-interview-spice-girls

Dawson has written a novel based on Alice in Wonderland, but with a trans lead character:

'Wonderland is also a wake-up call to anyone who believes gender reassignment might be a happy-ever-after. Alice has recently returned to school after three months in hospital following a suicide attempt. “While I’m delighted with my perky little boobs,” she says, “I was profoundly disappointed that my urge to cut myself didn’t vanish with the first milligram of oestrogen to pass my lips.” Her problems, Dawson points out, are those of all too many young women. “When I’m at the Hay book festival or at Yale, these teenagers come into my signing queues and they are scarred. It must be talked about because it permanently affects girls.”'

Yes, teenage girls are really delighted with their perky little boobs, you misogynist little creep.

I was a teen not so long ago and remember what I would read from the school library. I read Candy at age 13 and that's a Kevin Brooks story about a man who meets a prostitute and falls in love with her, has drugs and violence in it. I was able to just check it out from the library!
Even some Jacqueline Wilson books.. Love Lessons features student having a semi-relationship with teacher. Girl Out Late I think features teen girls stuffing their bras with paper and sneaking off to parties making out with boys etc.

BTW I am not excusing this book by Dawson. Its horrible. I was just picking up on the comment made by PP about general state of YA fiction.

I wouldn't expect kids older than 16 would be reading YA though, more like adult at that age.

Surely one of the reasons young girls mutilate themselves, starve themselves and binge eat is the very real terror of men who are suddenly interested in those emerging breasts.

For me I did those things because I didn't feel attractive enough. I wanted a slimmer waist, bigger boobs, a rounder bum, a slighter nose... The list was endless.

All threads about Dawson receive a high volume of deletions. I have noticed it in previous threads about La Dawson. It’s almost if someone is watching 👀

It’s hardly any wonder we have a generation of teenage girls trying to identify out of being female - where is the representation of the actual Adolescent and young adult female experience?

So glad I grew up with Judy Blume and Jacqueline Wilson and all these women in bands

Don't forget Kenickie, Elastica and Skunk Anansie...

I won’t! Justine Frischmann 😍 Skin 😍😍
(please add videos. I gotta go out for a bit!)

No Doubt:

St Etienne:

Curve:

Hole:

Silverfish:

The books and TV show ‘My Mad Fat Diary’ (they changed the era for the show) are the best/most representative stuff that I’ve encountered in recent years. Who is writing like that for the girls of now?

www.amazon.com/My-Mad-Fat-Diary-Memoir/dp/125011649X?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

I didn't have any boobs til way after everyone else but I have spent years of my life trying jumpers round my waist to hide my arse. I still do.

They have no idea what it's like do they

I often browse this sub although don't post and I'm quite nervous of getting it wrong here (don't take it the wrong way, you all come across as very intelligent and I feel some of what I say would just be eye roll worthy) and I was quite shocked by the deletions here.

God those bands take me back. They were bloody birlliant women.

brilliant

I had a face full of metal and green hair and bovver boots and adult men would come up to me and say ‘why has a pretty girl like you gone and done that to yourself?’ And I would say ‘so old men like you don’t fancy me’.

I recognise so much of that attitude in many of the detransitioned young women I’ve met. It’s a fear and self preservation in a cloak of defiance.

I will say I don't understand the "they have no idea what's it like" because while I agree with that, I don't think all girls tie jumpers around their waist to hide their body etc. When I was a teen 2007+ showing off your body was more the thing (thank you music videos I guess!?) and if you wore baggy clothes you were labelled a "grunger". I think perhaps there's always been girls more comfortable with their bodies than others. Some feel bad they are developing and want to hide it, some embrace it as being "more womanly/older/mature/attractive". Some are overly sexualised through the media they consume. I don't think there's a blanket way that teens deal with the male gaze.

sylv

We were all " newbies" once. God I know I was. Yes theres many incredibly intelligent women here but also average ones like me it's not an exclusive club with high qualification entry process. Please, post,

I'm daft as a brush Sylvari but it doesn't stop me from contributing to the threads here.

But no man can ever understand what a teenage girls goes through. Because they are male.

Oh of course ducksback. I agree with that! I don't agree that all teens experience or react to the male gaze in the same way, that was all. As you were. I didn't mean anything by it, I think it's interesting some teens seem to go one way and others another, it makes you wonder why, what's the difference between the two? Probably a bit of a derail. :)

sylv

I often wonder whether men were just better at hiding what they did back then or whether now as its seemingly so much more acceptable to flaunt your kink in public that they dont even need to hide it any more.

Alot of the way kids dressed back then were just as a right of passage. You channelled your inner grunge and lived in combats playing marilyn Manson and skunk anansie

Or you rolled your skirt up and walked around orange fron the cheap foundation in the boots bargain bin.

Now the influencers are no longer talented musicians but people who post contouring videos on you tube and straighten their hair to within an inch of its life.

But no man can ever understand what a teenage girls goes through. Because they are male.

Exactly. And in this case, Dawsons trans status, is the USP. They actually market the idea that they have had both experiences. Talk about cake and eat it!

As if the definition of a teenage girl is a man who feels uncomfortable and wants to be a woman. The fact that the woman they want to be is constructed solely through the male gaze, is what makes this so damaging.

the woman they want to be is constructed solely through the male gaze

This, a thousand times over. It's so thuddingly illogical.

Sylvari*

I hear you. Think I might be around the same age. In primary, I felt like my skinny friend got more attention than me & she was more popular. I developed anorexia around the transition to secondary school. I wanted to be skinnier because skinny = attractive to me back then. All the music videos had very slim women in them, like Fergie or Nicole Scherzinger.

Then at secondary I only had A-cups (still do) & cut my hair cut pixie-style like P!nk who was one of my faves.

Got called ugly, a dyke, a boy, people would say as I walked by "is that a boy or a girl?". It made me feel so unfemale and I think I reacted to that by overly sexualising myself and wearing bum-shorts and loads of makeup etc, craving the body of the "male ideal" because then people wouldn't be nasty to and I could feel better. I was convinced that if I could just look "sexy" my life would be fine. It all came from low self-esteem in the first instance.

I used to say I'd swap my boobs for my friend's who had F-cups, and she said she's take mine anyday. On the other side, she was dealing with the over sexualisation of her breasts. I'll bet if I got what I "wanted" back then, I'd soon take it back...

It's so sad what this all does to teen girls.

Interesting crossover here with the Karen thread.

What’s really boiling my shit is that vulnerable people will be told to shield until Xmas so that these Karens can conga in the street.

twitter.com/junodawson/status/1259108409061912577?s=19

The video shows men, women and children.

'These Karens'? An insult for middle aged women is now an insult for anyone?

Is Juno inadvertently telling us Juno doesn't like women very much?

Of course Juno doesn't like women. We represent something intrinsic that, try as they might, they will never be. I suspect even when taken in by a group of female friends and praised to heaven and "accepted", they know deep down the truth and will always resent women for that.

It reminds me of an ex who always had to prove he could do something better than me, and if he couldn't, then it was derided as useless or pointless anyway.

I suspect even when taken in by a group of female friends and praised to heaven and "accepted", they know deep down the truth and will always resent women for that

Which begs the question why on earth do they want people to lie to them if they are just gonna hate them for the fact they know its lies anyway

Alice is shadowed by a mysterious character in a cat hoodie, while the Tweedle twins are social media influencers with an abusive sexual interest in transgender girls.

I found myself doing an absolutely massive involuntary eyeroll upon reading this and then right below it is a comment about the trans character getting raped by two teenage girls, and... ow! my eyes!

*Which begs the question why on earth do they want people to lie to them if they are just gonna hate them for the fact they know its lies anyway•

It’s about control. They can’t change reality and hate women for being something they can’t be. By forcing women to ‘accept’ their lie at face value, they have control over the same women.

It’s about control. They can’t change reality and hate women for being something they can’t be. By forcing women to ‘accept’ their lie at face value, they have control over the same women.

Yes, exactly. And when they get told no, and can't control women, they suffer something like "narcissistic injury" which they deal with by channeling rage and hatred into their interactions with these women (ie ones like us who believe know gender identity ideology is bullshit and say so).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissisticrageeandnarcissisticcinjury